


Do not suffer a witch to live

by pixieherbie



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Alternate Universe - Vikings, F/F, F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-05
Updated: 2017-11-05
Packaged: 2019-01-29 16:34:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12634899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pixieherbie/pseuds/pixieherbie
Summary: An alternate universe set in the Middle Ages, where a young woman, a living sacrifice to the Church used to absolve the sins of womankind, is taken by invading pagans, and learns the extent of her witchcraft and heritage.





	Do not suffer a witch to live

**Author's Note:**

> There is a lot of rape/non-consensual activity, as well as self-blame and unhealthy ideology, at the beginning of this story, and it will continue to be referenced throughout this story.

I do not know who will read this, and there is a certain selfishness in that.  
The Lord frowns on such self-promotion. I am nothing, and certainly should not strive to be known, or seek fame through any medium.  
I am doubly hell-sent by my literacy.  
The Christ-child in all His wisdom even condemned the learned woman. How shall we devote ourselves fully to the Kingdom and our husbands with such distractions?  
My sister, Santa Marta bless her womb, taught me in the secret times in our youth, and I continued our disobedience, even seeing her fate fall swiftly.  
It is said her husband frequently sups with the Pope, and the frequent bruises on her cheekbones seem to indicate his piety. I do not know if her spirit has been broken, only that her smuggled letters have not arrived since her third daughter was still budding inside her ribs, now a toddling babe.  
I grieve for her, even with the knowledge of our complicity in Lucifer’s dominion. I suspect our brother, long since dead for sexual rebellion, taught her this skill. I cannot begrudge her sharing; it is a lonely sin to commit.

Alas, I am a sinner. Perhaps in this book, however deviant, I may absolve some of my faults in the act of confession. Only the Father knows, in the end. So I write in mystery of my soul, and sin again in my doubt and ignorance.

I think I am a witch. Perhaps some day a priest will stumble across this log and find me out. I welcome the trial; mayhap I will be released from this hellish in-between.

I cannot cease my sin! Ya-weh is all-knowing in His Good Book, when he exposes the eternally damned woman for what she is. I am alone up here, these last 50 nights now. I abstained from my scripting for so long, fasting and praying for the strength to obey at last. I cannot comprehend my audacity at these writings; I feel consumed by the need to pen my passions and thoughts, and once the idea comes sent from hell I cannot rest until a quill is in my fingers and I am scratching at the parchment like a demon at the gates of Sheol.  
I heard voices on the wind, calling for me to leap out and dance with them, to fly out into the sea that crashes deep below.  
My stone tower is cold and lofty, and I can see farther into the horizon than God intended mankind to observe.  
This mountain reminds the flock that God is ever-present, always watching, and swift in His Vengeance.  
Here I sit at the top, paying penance one day at a time for the sins of my mothers.   
What does Ya-weh think, that I steal some time from Him to scribble out my human fallibility?  
His rage will catch up to me.  
Or perhaps it already has. 

I found a bit of old polished brass tucked behind a stone near the rafters today. The beams are scraped and sliced with rust red blood, silently reminding me of my duty and heritage in this hermitage. Women have abased themselves for millennia here, atoning for the crime of Eve. The polished brass is another reminder; that always, we women will find a way to subvert the Will of the Most High.

I wonder how many women have leaped out this window, down to the churning tempest beneath. It is the one thing not forbidden to us, as females. To end our own lives is not considered thieving to our Christ-lord. It is our one path of redemption. I do not think myself too much of a coward, but rather too filled with sin. I wish to relieve the world of my blackness, but I cannot.

Father forgive me, for I am a sinner.

Every time I doubt our gracious, fearsome Lord, or feel stirrings in my body, I hang a red silken scarf out the northward window, to be counted by the watchers in the bell tower. Every twenty-eighth day a priest comes to my cell, and for every sin he will stripe me. I am tied to the wall during my purification, and if I scream in a way that displeases the Lord, he may take more blood. The last few hours of dusk he takes my body however Ya-weh directs him. Last cycle, he brought three monks, from our mountain church, and they cleansed themselves in me.  
It still hurts, Mother preserve me. They do disgusting things to me, forbidden things, and I can see how they hate me for creating the lust in them. They rushed into me, desperate and cruel. I can see it in their faces, the conflicting emotions fleeting and sudden. They release inside me, a holy broken chance at making a child to give back to God.  
They know I have already spawned a devil-child, but once in a great while, the sins of the people are great enough that Ya-weh demands another sacrifice from the Whore of Babylon.  
This has not happened in living memory; indeed the High-Bishop has spoken that my womb is sealed and barren. The whispers from the women are that they leave this small hope for the men, that they might not lose hope, but be filled with vigor and passion for the Lord.  
Hatred wells inside me as I think this, and I tell them, eyes downcast in my sin, of the emergence of the sinful thought.  
I have already given them the flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood, fruit of my womb.  
But it is not woman’s place to hate, but to accept her place.  
And this is mine.  
I expected to be blessed with another single stripe for my thought, for the Lord forgives better those who comes willingly, but instead their eyes grew harder and one of the traveling priests declared a prophecy of desolation of the wrath of God.  
They became overcome with the Spirit of the Most High, and they did not stop finding their release nor cease the beatings when the sun set, as is decreed in the Book itself.  
Women are to be shunned in the moonlight. It is then at the witching hour men are not protected from our nature and schemes. Jehovah turns a blind eye to those who disobey Him and seek women in the night. At some point I lost lucidity, and when I awoke it was dawn, and I was alone in a pool of blood, covered in salt. The Lord must have spoken to their hearts to continue the absolution, and who am I to questions his Chosen Ones? At least in this I may find some rest, after this ordeal. I am redeemed from my past sins now, until I collapse into the mire again, and they have absolved themselves in me, with the final blessing of the salt pulling out the filth. At least in this I know there is truth. The searing pain, teaches the Holy Book, is salt from tears of holy saints, calling out the demons inside; now in myself, given to me, once from the constituents served by the ardents who have placed themselves, and the cycle of confessions, inside me.

Once in the life of a Whore, during a time where the sun goes black, and the Voice of God demands retribution, the priests place all the sins of the people inside of her, and she conceives a child of Lucifer nine months later. This blackness is then crucified as atonement, while still yet linked to the mother. The sins of the nation are thus atoned, until another blight comes from Jehovah, signifying our darkness and need of salvation. Mother wills that my price has been paid in full.  
My body still bleeds from the demands of God. I pray that this show of devotions stirs the heart of the Most High, and He sends us rain.  
The people are starving.

  
She came to me in a vision while I slept, body naked save for strange dark markings painted in the style of the ancient, pagan arts up and down her limbs. There was a circlet of strange metal and leaves that held her wild locks out of her face. I have never seen a woman so fierce, nor terrible.  
She carried a long spear that dripped blood and wine, and when she spoke the words rolled off of me like oil.  
She started chanting, and I felt fire rise up around me, and burn, but not unkindly.  
Rather like a roaring embrace, or enveloping incense.  
I was lifted up, and suddenly we were not alone but surrounded by thousands like her, and the moon screamed down at us to dance, and so we did, whirled up in a carnal spiral, as dark shapes and horrible secrets I should not know poured into my mind.  
I awoke knowing things that must be true, but cannot exist in my mind.  
I know not who showed me these secrets, but I fear its power.  
Methinks Our Lord and Savior was not the One who sent the visions, and I am terrified by it. What shame I feel for this secrecy.  
I, who takes on the pains of our sins, cannot confess and alleviate this madness.  
  
The Lord hates all darkness.  
Many see this darkness inherently in female biology.  
All of man is open and inviting for the True King, proud and erect, but the woman is full of dark secret places, hard to find, and ominous to comprehend. The priests do not like that we can grow life, that we can create boys who will become men for their monasteries and swords.  
It is one thing we are needed for, and praise be to the Infinite Virgin for this small, double-edged mercy.  
I think without it, we should have been smote from the eyes of man and God long ago.  
Mothers whisper in secret to their daughters of this power in our sex, in the dark of the night, far from the chapels and spy-holes.  
While we must bear many children, in this we have some measure of worth. A woman bearing a child is safe from heavy beatings, as she might bear a son, and no danger may befall him. I think, Christ preserve my spirit, that the priests hate us because they are denied us.  
Marriage is forbidden save for eldest sons who inherit lands, and only those deemed worthy by the Church.  
This is heresy, of course, to presume that men should desire to be wed, that those destined by God should crave something other than His Divine Workings. But we women are few compared to the males, from the witch trials that began during the time of the 6th Papacy, and the mandatory celibacy imposed on the second and third sons has boded ill for the maiden-race these last 500 years.  
I feel their eyes, and they are hateful that we bring them to lust. Men are created perfect; above earthly urges, and it is only when a daughter of Eve behaves in a lewd manner that a man should stray.  
Men have each other for perfect company, conversation, and creation, but they sometimes desire our bodies, and they hate us for it.  
They despise me for it. A Holy Whore, the Black Virgin, the Sacrament of Wives: they hate me for the offering I am forced to give by birthright.  
Would that I was a chaste woman. God chose this path for me, but oh how their eyes burn!  
Their hands crush my breasts and thighs as they spill their precious seed into my womb.  
They hurt me, and I see the glee derived from my blood-rimmed eyes and choked-down sobs.    
  
Something is coming. The winds are ominous. I wonder if it is death I sense, or something worse.  
Counting the days is forbidden during the time of penance, but God Himself smote woman with a calendar of blood and moons.  
My own body, of course, betrays me.  
What existence, I wonder, to be a man, welcomed by Heavenly Sovereign and Earthly King alike.  
To speak with the Most High!  
I am forbidden the thought, but I crave His reassuring touch.  
We will never have it, daughters of Eve, filth of the earth.  
Even the serpent stayed in communion with the Creator, even through chastisement.  
But Eve was cast out, and womankind eternally removed from favor.  
And here I sit, eons past, criss-crossed with atonement scars that shall continue on for ever and ever, Amen.  
  
I have done something unforgivable, yet I am more pleased than I have been since before I was given to the church, a decade gone now.  
May God burn me for my witchcraft. Take me as you will, Jehovah.  
Some of the absolutions have ripped me apart. I have carried the faces of the worst of the priests, deep in my soul, and I have dreamed of their carnage, deep at night, when the fires and voices consume me.  
The first of the punishers, the bishop who ripped my child from my belly, died with his eyes burned out of his head and twisted like a forgotten toy a fortnight ago.  
  
This first death I could pretend was not my doing, no matter how exact to my vision it seemed. But the bells tolled again last night, telling of tragedy, of three monks from the high country. They were torn apart as if by some wild animal.  
I have dreamed of them and their crushing arms for weeks, screaming into my thin blankets, willing the beasts of the wild to come save me. Maybe so they have.  
I am in turmoil inside.  
Ya-weh will not suffer a witch to live, so why do I still breathe?  
Does some great judgement await me?  
I rest in the Words of the Good Book : _The Lord decides our path, His Wrath comes like lightening, and His Justice none can predict. Fierce and Mighty is the Most High, amen and amen._  
  
  
The visions return, almost nightly now, and with them come strange rumblings in the ground that sway to the rhythm of my hips and cease with my intakes of breath. The sea heaves with my prayers, and ebbs as I sink to the floor in my adulations.  
Stars stream across to the birthplace of the sun, always eastward in their fiery.  
The end of the world is upon us, and every letter I slide onto parchment eases it’s passing.  
I am propelled forward by forces bigger than myself, and older than the stones on which I writhe alone.

I see white birds streaking on the horizon, like low clouds, or the breath of Jehovah.  
I know them to be ships. They mean death for this land. I have seen it.  
  
Closer now, and I see one comes with a sail of blood red. The pagans are upon us.  
The sea is raging, and they ride high on her tempest. Methinks she is helping them along with her ferocity.  
Shall I die this day? I have no fear.  
What can these beasts do that I am not bound to a thousand times at the feet of Christ?  
  
I have lied, a most egregious sin. I am frightened, deep past my ribs.  
  
They have bypassed my mountain for now, and I see the cathedral burning in the vale so far below me, sheltered against the winds of the ocean, but not from her ravagers. The Pinnacle of Light has fallen, and the pagans drag off spoils to their long, narrow ships.  
The rivers flowing from the city run red tonight, to match the ships.  
More have arrived in the night; the ship is thick with the blood red sails now.  
They are coming for me.  
The drums are climbing the cliff as I speak.  
The whispers on the wind grow stronger in tempo with the drums, and my heart.  
  
I am alive, and though I know my judgement is at hand, I am filled with terrible relief.   
They found my parchment and quill tucked behind my chamber pot, and tonight I found them wrapped in a bundle next to where they placed me in the belly of the ship. Their witches held me down and rubbed strange oils and ground leaves into my lashes, and I cried, for though my wounds were soothed, the penance means nothing if it is not felt in full. When the monks and soldiers come for them, I will face the Wrath of the Church. I begged them with my eyes and hands to let me be, to no avail, but in the night ripped at the bandages and dug my fingers into my flesh, pulling the cuts open. Now I bleed into the night, reciting the Lord's Prayer. May it be enough. I have no ink, so I write this with the blood pooling out from my thighs. Perhaps this will be enough to atone.  
  
They found me, in the haze of dawn. I awoke in the presence of a strange, blank-faced woman, and she has not left my side since, now three days gone by. She often chants in a high, sing-song voice, and I have had the most severe hallucinations and visions. My body feels heavy; often I cannot move, as fearsome demons and flashing lights swirl around the room. I have screamed out to the Savior to rescue me, but He is silent. The Lord will not save me now. I have been abandoned to the powers of the Devil, and my damnation is sealed. Mother hold me, but I am afraid.   
  
I think I am to be given to their warlord, a towering, dark skinned man who moves like a creature of the night. My prayers are the only thing left to me.   
_Et orate pro misericordiae accipit ut iudicium et causam Dominus._  
  
Today, the fire beckoned me into its embrace, and therein the flames I stood, untouched. My new husband, a pagan barbarian with no respect for the Law, came in and saw me wrapped in fire, yet untouched. He kissed the four corners of the room, while I stepped out of the blaze, uttering strange words and experiencing strong emotions. Immediately, he took pleasure in my body while he whispered incantations I did not understand.  
I know there was a spirit inside me, for while he touched me, I felt such convulsions and intense emotion as I have never known.  
All Christians know that for the weaker sex any intimacy is pain, as punishment for the Fall.  
I am ashamed, for I awoke this morning dreaming of his hands.  
My mother would avert her eyes from mine and deny me my birthright, if she were in this world with me.  
“Bear their children, strong and hale, but never seek their attention. The less your lord notices you, the better off you will be.” she said to me during my first menses. “The day you think you are safe, you will lose something precious to your lord husband. So is their right.”  
She never spoke of desiring a husband in this way though.  
I feel as if I have scraped away the shale and discovered something long-forgotten, and I wish to clutch it tight to me, safe from the Christians of my homeland.

Last week, whilst I was stricken with terror waiting to be wed to my pagan lord, the ground shook and the river that strikes through the city ran silver. The earth heaved in unison with my sobbing, and only ceased with my final shudder. Every time I felt tears well behind my eyes, the forest floor swayed like the deck of the sailing vessel I was captured in. I do not want to understand this heat in my bones.

I think my lord husband somehow knew I was filled with his devil-gods when he chose to steal me away from my home. I am sure the rumors had spread of the woman who lived alone in a tower of granite, absolving her sin in silence. Did he feel the stones compel him to me, from across the sea? Even in my penance, I was rebellious. I should have known there was a spirit inside me I could not quit. I sang to the stars every night, commandments be damned. My rebellion was small, but the Lord judges the liar and the murderer equally, no?  
Perhaps this is my real purgatory; eternity among the pagans.

I haven’t said a word in the two months I have been in this strange land. My lord does not seem displeased by this, but I cannot understand his tongue, only his tone. He has looked at my script once or twice, but only in passing. They have a written word, but it is most complex. My writing does not bother him; indeed, I often write in his presence in the morning hours. Here, men and woman seem to exist together, in academia as well as domestically. I cannot comprehend this, nor the sheer numbers of women. Women, as well, seem to speak for their goddesses and gods, and I have never seen a man strike a woman. And there are people, who I cannot tell if they are man or woman! I do not even know the correct process for their pairings here, and thus, am consistently unsure of my husband’s actions or expectations. He is gentle with me, and rarely comes to me at night except to sleep late when the fires burn low. I think he has another lover, and this does not displease me. My God requires me to please my husband, but my Church decries pagan relations. I know not what the Book says about foreign husbands, and somehow, I find myself not caring. I deserve twenty lashes for that thought. Self-flagellation is forbidden for women, however, and I am thus isolated from any Christians by an ocean. Still, I find myself not caring somehow. 

I am given free reign to wander in this new land, indeed, for where would I run to? I have found a new sensation in slipping out of the keep at nighttime. Often times my pagan lord follows me at a distance, watching over my wandering, but never attempting to stop me or engage in any activity. I cannot pretend to understand this place, but I will not deceive myself by pretending I do not enjoy these newfound freedoms and delights.

I have fully succumbed to this spirit inside me. I have felt whispers and power since my youth, and cried out to Christ to absolve me. I joined the Church as a Black Virgin, dedicated my body to the confession of womanhood, and paid for the sins of my family with blood and sacrifice. I took the sex of the priesthood, and let them spill themselves inside of me as our God demands. I birthed a child of sin and watched her burn as she was yet tied to my womb, so that the Lord might forgive our people.

I have sat in shame and blood as my breasts were sliced with steel and filled with salt, and I gave my soul to the Kingdom, but never once was I forgiven, and never once was I cleansed. I lived alone in a tower praying for a thousand days and ten thousand nights, and God did not speak to me, but my gifts from hell only grew, and I hid them, I tried to kill them, but yet they grew like the child I hold inside me these lastfour moons.

I did not know my body could hold life again; the priests told me that the Lord had sealed my womb after the child of sin was consumed in flames. I think they lied to me. Mother keep me, but I think they lied.  
I grow a little one inside me, these seven years since I was ripped apart from my first daughter, and I weep, for a hope that I never dared have. This one is mine, and no god or demon can take her from me. 

Last night I slept under a full moon, with my stomach round and high, as wolves sang in the forest around me. I have never felt so alive.

There is a woman here, who walks with their goddess and speaks her truths. She compels me, like the flames call to me, or the wind promises secrets. I feel drawn to her in such a way that I cannot comprehend. Her hips sway to a beat that only she and I can hear. We danced in the great hall to an invisible song together late at night while the fires fell to embers and the moon swooned above us. Her lips brushed the bones above my breasts, fingers softly brushing my round belly for a quiet moment before she spun away again. I have never felt such longing, as I do for her. This is forbidden by my religion, and I care not. I will dance with her again. We are the same, she and I. The whispers pull us together, and we walk through the pines and white birch trees all night speaking of nothing and singing of everything. The goddess is alive in her eyes and footsteps. I want her.

My pagan lord kissed my mouth today while I was stopped in the kitchen, and I felt in in my deep in my bones, accompanied by a vision of fantastical beasts and furious winds. Immediately there after I was struck with strong contractions. I was so elated at the strength of the child I exclaimed “Praise the Holy Mother!” and at the sound of my heretofore unused voice, he jumped backwards and knocked a tray of fresh grain bread onto the floor, earning a thump from the cook. I have not spoken in a year, indeed, I could barely remember how. I sing wordless keens and fragments of songs, but words have escaped me. I think in a dream, I gave them to a demon, and have only thus found where he hid them. My child thrashed and kicked inside my belly, and my husband cried as he touched my heaving stomach and my shocked face. I understand their tongue tolerably well now, and his murmurs of she-who-holds-my-spirit, nearly undid me. The pagans are far more loving than my rigid birthplace, and I will not ask to be forgiven for such a thought.


End file.
